Please ignore the first question.  I just re-read the instructions and noticed that you are supposed to lay the glass out and cut it diagonally across.  Since I don't have a place large enough to lay it out to cut it other than the garage floor which I could never get clean enough, I just decided to leave the glass off the deck.  

It would be a lot simpler if CLC included a piece of glass the same length as the deck, like they did for the hull. 

Don't omit the glass - the epoxy saturated glass is what gives your boat strength and impact resistance. The wood mostly gives it shape and color. Lay the glass somewhate diagonally over the deck, then trim off most of the excess. The little snags and bumps will smooth out easily. I use a carpenter's dusting brush to smooth the cloth; a wide paintbrush will also work. Note too that the glass cloth is stronger in a bias or diagonal layout. -Wes

Thanks for the advice but the fiberglass that came with my kit is on its way to the local landfill because I botched the job of cutting it diagonally so  badly that one of the triangular  pieces was not wide enough to cover the deck, not to mention the fact that where I cut  the cloth it was trying to unravel.

I find the whole fiberglassing process to be immensly frustrating.  Earlier I messed up while wetting out the cockpit fiberglasss so badly that I finally just pulled it all out wet epoxy and all, and tossed it in the trash it and bought another piece to do the cockpit.

When I did  the hull, the glass cloth apparently stretched or something so I ended up with this big wrinkle in the the cloth up by the bow on one sidce that I could not wet out.   I finally just cut out with a pair of scisors and  smoothed it out and laid a patch over it and sanded the whole mess down after the epoxy cured.

I just put my unfinished kayak on Craigslist.  If nobody buys it I may make another attempt.  LOL

I was going to say lay the glass on, while dry cut to approximate shape, use a bit of the cut off to finish the last bit. overlap a bit and while dry to touch but still green its easy to sand smooth. 

Who said it had to be perfect. 

Rob,

First off, you did absolutely the right thing by pulling it off and throwing it away. You should never put anything on your boat that you're not happy with. It'll just nag at you and it'll be much more difficult to fix after the boat is finished.

That said, a glass job that looks like the dog's breakfast is still pretty easily fixed. As long as it's all properly wet out and bonded to the wood the external appearance can be taken care of to the point where it can be an award-winning kayak if you care for that sort of thing (though Ed is right - it doesn't have to be perfect).

All you have to do is switch over to a painted kayak. A lot of sins can be made to go away with epoxy, phenolic microballoons, sandpaper and paint. Once the weave is filled and the boat is faired smooth you can decide what level of workmanship you want in your paint job.

The actual painting is pretty quick and simple, much easier than glassing. All the work is in the prep. But that work is mostly time and patience and consists of applying enough primer, sanding most of it off and applying more if needed. Once the boat is smooth enough or you've had enough of prepping it, then you paint.

So it's still salvageable, it can still look like a new car and, in any case, it'll still be fun to paddle. Even though all the awards are given for that last 0.020 inches on the outside, structure and hull shape is what's really important.

Good luck however you go,

Laszlo

Laszlo has it exactly correct. My first kayak was as frustrating as yours - I couldn't seem to get anything right. I finally just sanded it all down with 40 grit to 180 grit sandpaper in a ROSander and painted it all one color -Red. It didn't look bad from 20ft away and I had a lot of fun using it. My last build went very smoothly - yet I still had problems. Learning how to recover from disaster seperates the exerienced from the tyros, but believe me, seeming disasters happen to everyone. If worse comes to worse just glass all the seams and joints and forget the cloth. Coat the bare wood with three coats of epoxy and paint her. Might not last as long but will be lots of fun in between. Never give up.

I had to use two pieces of glass on the top of one of my kayaks and I could never get the transition to look good, I finally added some straps and buckels over that area to hide it and it looked much better. 

For the top, dont overlap it!  Thats my suggestion

Paint covers many ugly glass jobs

Always use a squeegee when wetting out glas, brushes just do not work and seems to waste resin.

Make sure all bubbles are out.  Buy one of the bubble buster rollers from www.fgci.com  they will save you time and effort.

Any updates? What area are you located? JRC